Petition for Matt to say "which you can't, if you failed your mushroom save in Castle Amber" every single time he describes a thing a character could do in D&D, from now until eternity.
Imagine: “Starting at 2nd level, you can push yourself beyond your normal limits for a moment. On your turn, you can take one additional action on top of your regular action and a possible bonus action. Once you use this feature, you must finish a short or long rest before you can use it again. Which you can’t, if you failed your mushroom save in Castle Amber
@@rynowatcher True, although when this was written, Stephen was not an immortal yet and immortals had not even been thought of. Clerics were still gaining power from the "ideas" they followed and immortals hadn't been invented yet. That was basically retroed into the game system years later. But when looking at it from a post 1991 time, it does fit together well
@@rynowatcher He IS an immortal. My point was, he wasn't at the time X2 was written so although your theory on why things are moving in time and such, although it fits real well with what was written later, it just wasn't why they had it happening at the time. It is actually one of the few times something actually fits with earlier and later stuff and seems to make sense. It just wasn't intended that way is all.
"Who are they? What are they doing here? Who does their taxes? Shut up! It's 1981. There's still lead in gasoline." There's never been a more accurate explanation of old school D&D logic (or lack thereof). This gave me strong Futurama vibes.
There lead in gasoline, cocaine in people's noses, and FM radio was the newest craze! Of course you have adventure with fire and brimstone raining out of the skies. Rivers and seas boiling. Forty years of darkness. Earthquakes. Volcanos. The dead rising from the grave. Human sacrifice. Dogs and cats living together. Just general mass hysteria!
Lol. Explain 5E videogame logic 😂😂. A place where any 1st level spellcasters can Cast unlimited offensive and utility cantrips and everyone developes "magical powers" over time.
I got to play Chateau d' Amberville in the 1980’s, and got my Fighter to level up to Thief, who would one day, in the Pits of the Slave Lords become a Bard, when having to multi-class was the only option to make it to that class.
@@imperialadvisor4880 you know, there is something nice about being forced to take level 1-5 as a particular class like Thief then you progress to Cleric, mage or fighter. Forces everyone in the survival stage to share the misery of trying to live by their wits before strapping on the plate Mail or a spell book.
"Who are they? Why are they here? Who does their taxes? Shut up! It's 1981, there's still lead in gasoline." This was the point where I had to pause the video and walk away for a few minutes because I was laughing too hard to process anything else. Ah, memories. This made my whole morning. :)
Yes please do more of these. Old-school nonsensical adventures are just so alien to me that they're honestly fascinating, I can't not think about the story explanations that would bring all these different elements together!
Just an FYI, Rakasta were a sort of precursor tabaxi, basically cat people, and unrelated to the rakshasa, the tiger fiends with the backward hands. They also show up in The Isle of Dread (X1) adventure. Living statues were Basic D&D golems but geared for lower level characters and were also in Isle of Dread, and they were featured in Journey to the Rock (B8) and Drums on Fire Mountain (X8) as well .
For clarity, I would add that Basic did have golems as well as living statues. Living statues (wood, stone, silver) were, well statues that cam to life, while golems were more of a collection of materials in roughly humanoid form (stone, bone, clay, bronze, iron). Rakshasa and Rakasta are both named after an Indian folklore monster, and neither are ever found in the same game. Basic had Rakasta as people, and ADnD had rakshasa as fiends.
A friend of mine wanted our AD&D 2nd edition DragonLance campaign to basically run through classic modules. This was the first one we did, and it took us 2 months to complete, and we skipped the north and east wings because we just wanted to get out of the damn castle. We played the Goodman Games version, and it was pretty fun and pretty close to the original module, but *greatly expanded* and with more art from the original artist. That was super neat too.
I´m currently DMing the Goodman Games version of it. They expanded the castle itself with an upper floor, and added some other elements. I like it, although my party insisted on going through all 100+ areas described in the book, in case they miss anything... They entered the unspeakable land last session, finally!
13:36 "I can't tell you how many times I've read box text to players who didn't understand it, asked me questions, and made me realize I didn't understand it, either." That's why, when I run a pre-made adventure, I re-write everything in my own voice. My experience is that the people writing adventures or modules write _for the page_ instead of _for the ear._
Always a good idea to do this or at least read through the text and make some quick bullet point notes to make sure you understand it. I did that with Curse of Strahd (for the castle part, anyway) and it was very helpful.
The weirdest thing was gaming with Gygax around 2001 and realizing that this was how he was going to game til he breathed his last. The whole White Wolf-inspired narrative RPG push never happened as far as EGG was concerned. This adventure is entirely worthwhile for the map of a manor home alone.
Our first module was B1: In Search Of The Unknown, which has the room with the pools. My cleric drank from one of the pools; the text said that you, the *player*, could not speak for a specific amount of time (I forget how long). I was reduced to writing notes and making hand gestures (mostly obscene); very frustrating at the time, but fun in retrospect.
I feel like that amber mist was basically "let's not worry about remembering resources/abilities spent last session". At least that's the vibe I get from it (apart from the whole "time passes between sessions like in the real world" thing.)
the early modules are so awesome. X2 really has this macabre, fairy tale, fever dream, original-meaning-of-Fae quality to it. very different to, like, most of the other modules EDIT: "Round" in B/X (like in this module) is 10 seconds. A dungeon Turn is 10 minutes. AD&D changed the wording a little so that a Round is 1 minute broken into 6 second segments. so that's where the confusion lies I also think that a lot of these very old modules don't give too much RP details beyond stats and "main programming" so that there would be more space for the DM to make stuff up or change things to suit the players and their actions. (gygax sorta hinted at this idea at some point where he says he doesnt want to make too many details or specific rules (barring his AD&D project and the financial reasons for it) cos the fun is in your table and your DM making stuff up) it does mean more prep but also means less, uhh, "un-prep" to ignore certain sections of the module that assume a certain interaction went a certain way. e.g. if B2 assumes the players will say form an alliance with the monsters and storm the keep, significant amount of the official module will detail the possibilities in that and subsequent besieging mechanics... which would steer the DM into trying to make that happen so they don't waste their money on the module this is how L1 Secret of Bone Hill can cram basically an entire campaign of sandbox into a small publication: it's like a seed from which basic parameters are set up and the DM has the 'negative space' to extrapolate, change, add, and react to player decisions it's a very specific way of writing modules that i think the old writers never properly explained. so even old school players who were young at the time (like Matt's generation) or basically anyone that wasn't gygax had a disconnect in expectations and explanation (and thus thought it was a defect/lack as opposed to a creative choice. which led to the evolution pushed into 2nd ed modules and 3rd ed and so on that become either very railroady (Dragonlance) or the most common now that are these massive Adventure Path tomes) EDIT 3: i LOVE that last commentary about short stories, because the market and culture around that basically does not exist anymore. it's IMO critical to recognise that to understand the genesis of modern speculative fiction, and how that informs the way that the serialised stories end up being shaped
OD&D had 1 minute round & 10 minute dungeon turn before B/X or AD&D. So it was just different lines trying to speed up round differently from Original 1974 game))
I seem to remember it similar to you Arisu, there were different scales for round/turn in combat vs during exploration. I can’t recall just what the rates were but I feel like a full combat turn was a minute and a full exploration turn was ten minutes.
I played the this module back around 1982 during a slumber party and ate the bread in the dining room. My PC failed the save and wound up (as Matt describes) having to eat twice as much food for nourishment. I was a little bummed out, but took the PC to a different game run by a teacher at school and asked if that meant he had to drink twice as much alcohol to get drunk. The DM agreed and that became a repeating tactic at taverns: goad the locals into a drinking contest, put a lot of money down in bets, and clean up. Thank you Mr. Hayes, where ever you are!
Great stuff, thanks for the video! Btw, the ROOM OF POOLS may be from Room 31 of B1: In Search of the Unknown (also a very weird Basic adventure), which is just a room full of 14 pools with different liquids that have either weird or mundane effects.
This was my thought too. B1 is the first module I remember playing. I know one of the pools appeared to have healing properties but didn't really do much.
I remember when we played it one of the pools gave a stat improvement... but maybe that was the DM being extra "nice" because none of us would touch any of the pools. One was a pool of green slime or acid too.
The sliver light is actually a really good idea and something we should start using because at least in my group monsters killing the PCs between sessions is actually a huge problem in the game I dm. I can't tell you how many times we start game and they were ripped apart by owlbears during the week. What I don't understand is where they come from I am the dm but I never added owlbears to this dungeon.
We played Chateaux d'Amberville. It was the first time our DM made a cassette mixtape as a musical score for the adventure. At the crypt climax, he spliced together some sound effects from an Aldo Nova song. I remember I was terrified to walk on the puzzle square, so the DM's little brother just ran across it. The dream room added new characters to our party from a pile of character sheets we inherited from a friendly D&D mentor of our DM. Good times.
Howdy Kiddo, old DM from the 70's here. One round of combat was 6 seconds, 10 rounds was 60 seconds, or 1 minute, or 1 full turn. Rounds were further divided into "segments" when needed, and yes, we ran campaigns in "Real Time". Good job, fun video, by the way. So, in conclusion, most combats were well and truly over in under a minute, kind of like how it works in the real world.
Notes from a 50 year old gamer: I am seeing a lot of content creators making way too much of this "games happen in real-time!" feature. This was not a hard and fast rule by any means, and was very loosely adhered to, even from the strictest DMs. That's mainly because it just doesn't hold up to scrutiny: In a Dungeon? Traveling by Boat? sleeping, etc. As a DM and a player, time between sessions was often handwaved and/or arbitrated quickly. USUALLY when it became important was when characters were getting rich. The amount of gold, as you mentioned, in old school dungeons could be exorbitant. And we were far more likely to roll random treasure for every single monster back then. 10th level characters with hundreds of thousands of gold could and did happen frequently. So they bought things. And built and renovated and invented things with that money. How long does it take to build a castle? We don't have time to wait a decade for your fortress to be built, so just say it was magic and here it is. Also, training was a thing as well. I think the metric was a week per level, could be wrong on that one, but y'know, a few weeks quickly turns into months as you progress. Downtime in a safe harbor was generally when you'd do that. Anyway, that's a knit to pick. Your confusion about the "Amber Light" is missing the point. Wandering monsters are rolled during rests. It's not about the downtime, it's about the playtime spent resting. When I ran this again I quickly realised that without the amber light, my party could be worn down pretty quickly if they're constantly harassed by wandering rakastas. Rakastas are NOT Rakshasas. Besides the obvious power disparity, Rakastas are very simple "Cat-People" (like the cast of "Cats") while Rakshasa are derived from hindu mythology and are powerful mystical beings. Box text helps focus the players attention (if done well) and falls flat sometimes. I am seeing the difference in playstyles though. Players used to use these cues to focus their questions. Nowadays players seem to expect an investigation check solves all problems. I'm not necessarily against this, but when confronted with a simple description of the room, my players tend to simply zone out and wait for me to finish before rolling investigation. Last but not least: It was suggested in the module to read the stories by Clark Ashton Smith. His Averoigne "cycle" is a collection of a dozen or so short stories that together could barely be called a novella. You could read them in short order. Now, these wouldn't help you much with individual characters, but you would quickly get that Averoigne is a cosmic horror playground and that can help set the mood. Castle Amber is very much in the spirit of Ravenloft as they were both inspired by the same authors.
There certainly is a place for "Fairy-tale logic", or more accurately "Fairy-tale _non_ logic", like Castle Amber. Mind-blowing weird stuff for no apparent reason ... sounds like fun!
I had the same sort of experience with Castle Amber. My version was heavily influenced by my DM. Amber is a great example of a module that leans really hard on the stuff the DM focuses on and adds.
yeah one could imagine that the way the castle is played could change a lot based on the DM's personal idiosyncracies. Uncanny unsettling horror, or overly emotional tragedy through a man's mind palace, or strange fae whimsy etc.
For the record, I came out of the feast in Castle. Amber, with an 18 constitution on my spindly wild elf mage. It later prompted me to find myself Superior version of fine familiar so that I could hang with a dire wolf. Totally made the character.
In fact, I think that this video convinced me to run this module just for the sake of nostalgia. Definitely, I will not set this in my own D&D world. I don't think it would survive. But I have a few absurd settings for it.
Unlike a lot of people, I played in the early 80's in my early teens and not again until 5e, in my 50's. I remember the crazy dungeons I made as DM back then, and looking back, assumed my brain as a teen was just a disorganized mess with no sense of plot, character, or story... but maybe I just internalized the style of the modules we played, and I wasn't quite as stupid and immature as I thought... because this is exactly how my dungeons were: odd, provocative, loads of quasi-random strange events and inexplicable magic happenings operating in ways to intrigue or amuse but without reason or cohesive story. I had overlooked just how much the game had changed and matured, but thank you for this delightful reminder. Can't wait to see another UA-cam favorite (Jackson Crawford) and you together in a video.
Something worth mentioning since I'm currently in a campaign that does real-time between sessions: the PCs don't "log out" at the end of the session, standing idly until next Thursday, the characters simply spend days in town. Usually resting (since healing in Basic/Expert is at a rate of only 1d3 HP per *full day of rest*), carousing for gossip, procuring gear/hirelings for their next adventure/session, or talking to NPCs. During the week, between sessions, we usually RP all that stuff in chat, so the party is rested, researched, and ready to leave town for adventuring again come start of the next session. Anyway, love your videos! lol
Great stuff as always. One thing missing from old-school modules that even today is often overlooked, is a complete synopsis of the adventure for the gamemaster at the beginning of the module.
That’s because with old site-based adventures, there isn’t much of a summary to give. There are no events, no plots, no (or very little) NPC background, no story. Just sites that typically can be explored in an open, sandbox fashion. So the adventure designers wouldn’t have anything to include in a adventure summary, except a summary of the locations.
I'm currently DMing a BECMI game in Mystara. "Save vs. poison or die." Those were the days! Basic D&D and AD&D were dangerous and that's what made them exciting. I had many characters die during my roleplaying career and, as such, every adventure in which you were successful was so much more rewarding.
The boxed text is (also) a hold-over from convention play. When you would sit down at the conventions in the 70s, the adventure would have that intro text to get everyone into the adventure quickly.
Yeah, I would imagine most people who sit down to a convention adventure have already consented to whatever setup is needed to get to the adventure. Especially since everyone's time is limited. Having basic context for why the PCs are there is fine, but no one is really fussy about the details. Only that there's a plausible enough reason why their group of ratcatchers and grave robbers is in the enchanted castle in the first place.
Oh man, getting flashbacks for the Slave Lords (A1-4) series. We never made it all the way through but the whole "this is how they play at GENCON" was mysterious and crazy to us.
Currently playing that campaign with RogueWatson and having a blast. It is as you would expect much more of a horror campaign than the usual WotC fare.
@@stanwolford9743 I just downloaded the PDF recently and have yet to crack it open but I keep hearing recommendations so it has to be really good at this point
@@trexdrew Check out Rogue Watson’s channel if you want to see us play it. He makes some great modifications to the long travel section that you may find helpful.
Castle Xyntillan, of course very much in a similar style, has been so much fun. Although there is no overarching story, it's easy to make one and in fact there is a decent chance your players will invent one that you can just roll with.
Thanks Matt. Well done! This is my favorite adventure of all time due to the availability for a dm to adapt so many different 'carnival-like' encounters. One piece of context that answers a lot of the questions you posed is that the Amber family is cursed and has gone insane due to what they did (or most of them) to Stephen Amber. In one group, I had all of the players distant relatives of the Amber family. Definitely brought more purpose. Recently purchased the Goodman games book for Castle Amber (and several others including Isle of Dread). Definitely recommended!
The whole "amber mist" thing is due to the fact that the player characters are not allowed to leave the castle. In normal adventures of the time it was generally assumed that the PCs would leave the dungeon and go back to town to rest. But that wasn't possible here. If PC's just camped out in the middle of the dungeon in order to rest they'd get attacked by wandering monsters, spoiling their rest. With a typical 1 in 6 chance for a wandering monster every two turns (20 minutes) that means on average characters would have one encounter every two hours, or four in an eight hour "rest" period". And in Old School D&D you might get spells back after sleeping the night but you only get 1 hit point per day. All in all, this was a mechanic designed to ameliorate the "survival horror" aspect of trapping players in the environment.
I ran this adventure (or part of it) in high school, back in the mid-1980s. A couple comments about things I think Matt missed: 1. IIRC (I no longer have my copy), there is a pronunciation guide for the French names in Averoigne (av-er-wonn-ye?). 2. Rakastas are NOT rakshasas. They are a feline humanoid race unique to BECMI D&D, but similar to later editions' tabaxi.
This is exactly how I am running D&D (I run BX/OSE) at the moment, between adventures the party has to go back to town, they choose what downtime their characters are doing in town between sessions and time is assumed to pass 1:1 out of the game. They can't end a session in a dungeon, well... they can but I make them aware that their characters might not want to stay there for a week and go through a weeks worth of encounter rolls. I would assume the silver light is to help people running the module with the majority of the rules in effect at the time, as they will be somewhat stuck in this adventure! :)
The reason for the golden stasis field is that the PCs can’t leave the castle to return to base like a normal dungeon. basic D&D doesn’t have the real time rules that ad&d has, but it’s hard to heal without returning to base. So the authors had to come up with a way to heal between sessions. The wandering monster encounters would have been dealt with next session.
I like the mix of ideas. A trap that makes your dreams a reality? A feast of meals that will alter you, good or bad, unless you save against them? Even the idea that the entire dungeon is actually the exploration of some strange and powerful being's mind/memories, and the surreal, almost dreamlike nature of the place, there's some good stuff there. I'm not sure all of it should go together, but at the same time it's kind of inspiring.
I loved that this was also included in the official Mystara stuff for Glantri. They wrote a sequel in the early 90s with the CD voice acting. The Mark of Amber if I recall correctly.
YES! Thanks for reviewing Castle Amber. I'm running my group through it now, they just finished the west wing, and they all loved it! I have been role playing the Amber family to the hilt trying to show my players how insane this adventure is. Sadly only 2 of my players participated in the banquet, no matter how much I tried to get them all to sit down and eat, I even created a Maitre D that interacted with them in the game. 3 of my players almost had a group romance event with Richard and a Tabaxi while the other 2 sneaked into the lair of the Tabaxi to steal the key. My players had to find away to disengage from Richard's advances w out fighting him because they were all low on HP. What a blast!
Honestly some of these encounters seem super interesting and have so much room to be fleshed out and expanded upon, why ARE there 2 guards and a noble in a fancy hat sat by a boxer? Why DID the gold dragon disguise itself as a princess to get into the manor? Those seem like really fun ideas to explore, as long as you make your mushroom save.
How in the world did I learn about D&D being once played in real-time before the venerable Mr. Collville!? I'll just give myself a little pat on the back I guess!
Yeah monsters killing the PCs between sessions is actually a huge problem in the game I dm sometimes we start game and they were ripped apart by owlbears during the week. What I don't understand is where they came from I am the dm but I never added owlbears to this dungeon.
Not only is the subject very interesting to me as a peek into the early days of the hobby, but your enthusiasm and delivery really made this a really fun watch. I hope there's more.
20:33 The pools effects don't seem to match up, but multiple pools with various effects sound like it may have been inspired from room 31 of 'B1 - In Search of the Unknown'
I loved this! As someone who started playing in the 80’s, it was a blast to travel back in time and relive some of the same types of memories with Matt. These old modules are crazy to look back on, but I seriously loved every second!
I've been running the original x2 using Labyrinth Lord. It's on hiatus now, halfway through, because I planned a too long, too linear campaign with B4 wrapped around X2. Using Traveller as a palate cleanser now. 😂
hohoho B4 with X2 is going to be a loooong ride. and yeah linearising something like B4 would definitely be a lot of work for not a lot of return in terms of player enjoyoment. traveller is always a good time
Real time between sessions is a really valuable way to play the game, 10/10 recomend. I've been playing in and running a game using this style and can say that it has adds depth and emertion to the game that I have not experienced using other styles of play.
Me too. I had B2 and X1 from my B/X rules, bought this to continue, back then if you didn't see a module in the store it didn't exist so barely understood more B or X modules existed or they might not be a series and what a wacky way to make a campaign! Still love X2, moreso now I can create or fill all the gaps!
I've been fascinated by Castle Amber for a couple of years now, and while I dream of running it someday, it's so weird that I can't help but over-think it. This video made me realize that I can stop overthinking - it's just weird, full stop, and that's OK - and now I can relax, run it, and see what happens. Thanks Matt!
I've watched many of your videos (and I always enjoy them,) but this might be one of my favorites. I think we all owe a certain amount of gratitude to these old school modules that we all (I say, " we all" as if everybody is in their late 40's or early 50's! Ha!) grew up with and formed a lot of our conceptions of what D&D was. Whether something like Castle Amber is looked upon as whimsical, or even crazy, by today's gaming standards, it shaped what gaming was for us back in the golden era of gaming (and in particular, D&D.) I'd love your take on some of the classics that a lot of us grew up on, and I don't think I'm alone on that notion. Gaming has changed quite a bit over the years since those early module days, but for all of their zaniness, they still are stories and supplements that we talk about to this day...with fondness, I might add. Call it nostalgia, or reliving one's youth, but at the end of the day, all of those early modules hold a special place in a lot of gamers' hearts. I think i speak for a group of us here, if not all, that more videos like this are a welcomed addition to your catalog of videos. Long live the classics! Great job! *And cool Ghost shirt!
Doesn't sound like a module I'd run as a whole BUT I can definitely see pulling some of those encounters into another campaign :) Thanks for the ideas!
Which, of course, is half the function of the adventure module. It's _modular._ You're not just getting a complete adventure, you're getting a toolkit you can pillage for your own campaign. Whether that's a dungeon map, a list of random encounters, a neat vignette, or a framing device.
I was so excited to see your take on Castle Amber. I have never been much of a fan of "funhouse dungeons" (e.g., Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, Lan Beyond the Magic Mirror, etc.), but for whatever reason, I've always been fond of Castle Amber. It was one of the first modules I ever ran. I played it pretty true to the text, not yet knowing that the DM could do whatever they wanted to as well as the players. If my memory serves, I flat-out told my players they couldn't go to the Kingdom of the Ghouls, because it "wasn't part of the module and they would all just die." Ah, the good ol' days when folks didn't challenge the railroad so much, they just got on the train.
I would be the player to finish this adventure, and then immediately ask how much further we were away from where we were heading for our actual quest... ya know, from the opening box text lol
It makes me happy that you also use the word Xanthian. That actually makes more sense than not. It did devolve into puns run amok eventually, but the first half dozen or so were pretty awesome. Thanks for the sweet video!
I think the whole of the first set of Chronicles is an amazing fertilizer for creativity. It's quite amazing to consider what "reality" is to the Princes and what they can do.
@@kereminde I think Matt should read the books - a least the first 5 - they are quick reads. I combo theme this with Lankhmar and Melnibone themes and wrap it around 5e d&d😀
@@mayhem_64 I am unfortunately too young to have tripped across the same fantasy books as everyone else who played pre-WOTC D&D. No Lankhmar, Elric, but I did get 'Chronicles of Amber', 'The Pyrdain Chronicles', and Thieves' World. Along with a few other series more modern in provenance. But I was reading many things which fed into what Matt spoke of in the book. Often short stories weren't... well, look, pick up "Callahan's Crosstime Saloon" and you can see it. Asimov's first Foundation novel is another illustration. And I do recall reading some Harlan Ellison now and then, which... I do recommend to ANYone. My mom would talk about it sometimes if I could get her to that time of her life in college. Short stories seemed to be less about characters than the situation and where it went. And that was the most common format until it was seen there was a market. THEN the novels would happen more often.
I'm running this with the original Expert rules. I've got Isabel Amber taunting the adventurers with a pass-by as she makes her way down the west wing's hall of mirrors where she enters the Indoor Forest and, on a wandering monsters check, six skeletons emerge out from the Indoor Forest. Anything is possible around every corner! I'm having the adventurers find the necessary items which will grant them entrance ultimately to Averoigne, this being the main quest. It's working out better than I originally thought. We ran Isle of Dread for about a year and moved immediately into this one.
Omg so excited to see this! I threw this into the middle of lost mines of phandelver and our first character deaths were in here. So many memories and inside jokes from this wacky castle. Then they named the party The Amber Legion after the castle.
Recently, my Pathfinder 1e group ran this adventure as part of a longer ongoing campaign. The GM had to do a lot of work to convert things over, and he ended up making some changes to the narrative around the place to better fit within our campaign's story. The world-hopping section was replaced with a jaunt over to Faerûn, in which we adventured as "ancestral" versions of ourselves. It was a lot of fun, and the adventure in Castle Amber was bizarre, strange, and weird, but I think I'll have a lot of fond memories of it for a while.
Matt, I love your channel. You should really take a deeper dive into Castle Amber. It's got a learning curve, but worth it. Goodman games did a great job. Deep dive, BECMI, Mystara, Glantri, The Amberville family, the immortal Charles Amberville
The pool room is real from B1 In Search of the Unknown. My group is running through this now and just left the pool room last weekend. Great times after spending two games in the room messing with them. Don’t have the Goodman Games for Castle Amber but their In Search of the Boardlands is great as it ties B1 and Keep on the Boardlands together.
I DID A VIDEO ON 1-1 TIME, but I had NO IDEA it was in Castle Amber! I don't want to plug but QB and Supergeek Mike missed a few things from the guy whose notes they copied. You can use this rule on 5th edition btw!
@@davidmc8478 I think it's pretty obvious the module writers either forgot that fact, or (as Matt explained!) they didn't care all that much for the difference, and figured both games would run it.
@@gelatinousrube nah man, it’s just a way to have a safe overnight sleep in the dungeon. The text also lets the PCs level up, which normally means returning to base. They won’t finish the module at level 4, so the writers needed a mechanic to allow healing, resting and level ups without disturbance. In other dungeons a night sleep in the dungeon world be disturbed by wandering monsters each hour (1 in 3 per 20 min). It’s leomond’s tiny hut
@@mcolville Hehe I wish :). I probably just confused it with something else you had done, White Plume Mountain etc. Anyway very interesting and wacky adventure XD. And great video as always. Btw, Ive gotten about 20+ people to listen to the LOTR 1981 BBC Radio play since I discovered it through you last year. Thanks again, Ive prolly listened to that highlight series on your twitch 4-5 times by now :). Also got the courage to DM through you 2 years ago, still going strong :D.
Castle amber is written with the assumption you're using one to one time. There was no "stopping to rest" there was just ending the session and healing one hit point for every day you don't play. So if you played on a fixed time day, you're only going to have healed 7 hit points between sessions.
Love the timing of this vid. I'm at the end of a months-long break from ttrpg's. It began with the D&D conflicts, but that wasn't the cause. Me & my group of 20+ years are fighting real monsters, like Grief and Fear. I couldn't even think about gaming until yesterday, and hearing Coleville's delivery feels like a rallying cry to one of my life-long favorite hobbies. Blessings to you & to everyone who pursues their joys with passion.
Castle Amber was my first adventure in the early 90's and I have similar "was it my memory or was it actually awesome" feelings. We got to the gold dragon lady after 3 or 4 sessions, then our DM (my friend's dad's friend) bounced. Thank you for this bit of nostalgia!
I have been following Jackson Crawford for a few years now. Almost as long as I have followed you, and that has been from your first episode. I have a great amount of respect for the way he brings the Norse history forward. I am very much looking forward to that interview.
Petition for Matt to say "which you can't, if you failed your mushroom save in Castle Amber" every single time he describes a thing a character could do in D&D, from now until eternity.
Get this comment to the top, we need this
Imagine: “Starting at 2nd level, you can push yourself beyond your normal limits for a moment. On your turn, you can take one additional action on top of your regular action and a possible bonus
action. Once you use this feature, you must finish a short or long rest before you can use it again. Which you can’t, if you failed your mushroom save in Castle Amber
Hilariously, he was saying this for the first time when I read this comment 😂
IDK if we can get Matt on board with that, but it's going into my DM repertoire.
I need this to be a running gag in some fashion or I might just fail a wisdom save in real life
"An acorn tree"
Otherwise known in the industry as: an oak tree
I have a delicious guacamole tree in my backyard.
Lots of pine-cone trees where I live.
Yes, and I have a walnut tree in my ba..... Oh wait.
I have a stick tree. I know this because it keeps dropping sticks all over my lawn.
@@Triforce300 how do trees taste like
"Stephen's tomb travels through time and space" Ah yes, obviously. Why wouldn't it
"...But don't we all?"
As do I.
Is the tomb bigger on the inside than the outside?
@@rynowatcher True, although when this was written, Stephen was not an immortal yet and immortals had not even been thought of. Clerics were still gaining power from the "ideas" they followed and immortals hadn't been invented yet. That was basically retroed into the game system years later. But when looking at it from a post 1991 time, it does fit together well
@@rynowatcher He IS an immortal. My point was, he wasn't at the time X2 was written so although your theory on why things are moving in time and such, although it fits real well with what was written later, it just wasn't why they had it happening at the time. It is actually one of the few times something actually fits with earlier and later stuff and seems to make sense. It just wasn't intended that way is all.
"Who are they? What are they doing here? Who does their taxes? Shut up! It's 1981. There's still lead in gasoline." There's never been a more accurate explanation of old school D&D logic (or lack thereof). This gave me strong Futurama vibes.
There lead in gasoline, cocaine in people's noses, and FM radio was the newest craze! Of course you have adventure with fire and brimstone raining out of the skies. Rivers and seas boiling. Forty years of darkness. Earthquakes. Volcanos. The dead rising from the grave. Human sacrifice. Dogs and cats living together. Just general mass hysteria!
Lol. Explain 5E videogame logic 😂😂. A place where any 1st level spellcasters can Cast unlimited offensive and utility cantrips and everyone developes "magical powers" over time.
@@ricardojuanlopeznaranjo6651to be fair, it's not everyone, only adventurers. Magic is rare in general.
Matt, your rapid-fire delivery of all the encounters KILLED me
like if I had failed my mushroom save
I got to play Chateau d' Amberville in the 1980’s, and got my Fighter to level up to Thief, who would one day, in the Pits of the Slave Lords become a Bard, when having to multi-class was the only option to make it to that class.
@@imperialadvisor4880 you know, there is something nice about being forced to take level 1-5 as a particular class like Thief then you progress to Cleric, mage or fighter. Forces everyone in the survival stage to share the misery of trying to live by their wits before strapping on the plate Mail or a spell book.
I loved this video. “Shut up! There’s still lead in gasoline!!” Had me cackling
"Who are they? Why are they here? Who does their taxes? Shut up! It's 1981, there's still lead in gasoline."
This was the point where I had to pause the video and walk away for a few minutes because I was laughing too hard to process anything else.
Ah, memories. This made my whole morning. :)
If there's one thing I want to remember from this it's the phrase "... which you can't if you failed your mushroom save."
The guarantee that brandy turns you into a ghost because it’s a spirit.
Yes please do more of these. Old-school nonsensical adventures are just so alien to me that they're honestly fascinating, I can't not think about the story explanations that would bring all these different elements together!
Those old adventures are still awesome today!
Just an FYI, Rakasta were a sort of precursor tabaxi, basically cat people, and unrelated to the rakshasa, the tiger fiends with the backward hands. They also show up in The Isle of Dread (X1) adventure. Living statues were Basic D&D golems but geared for lower level characters and were also in Isle of Dread, and they were featured in Journey to the Rock (B8) and Drums on Fire Mountain (X8) as well .
Beat me to it haha, I ran Isle of Dread a couple of years ago and had the same moment Matt did
Journey to the Rock was the first module I ever DMd. Good memories
I never knew that, I always thought rakasta was a typo. Interesting!
For clarity, I would add that Basic did have golems as well as living statues. Living statues (wood, stone, silver) were, well statues that cam to life, while golems were more of a collection of materials in roughly humanoid form (stone, bone, clay, bronze, iron). Rakshasa and Rakasta are both named after an Indian folklore monster, and neither are ever found in the same game. Basic had Rakasta as people, and ADnD had rakshasa as fiends.
Excellent clarification!
…then it turns out they are jungle samurai cats on the invisible moon - Mystara has much freaky awesomeness
A friend of mine wanted our AD&D 2nd edition DragonLance campaign to basically run through classic modules. This was the first one we did, and it took us 2 months to complete, and we skipped the north and east wings because we just wanted to get out of the damn castle.
We played the Goodman Games version, and it was pretty fun and pretty close to the original module, but *greatly expanded* and with more art from the original artist. That was super neat too.
The original module is.printed inside the book before the conversion.
I´m currently DMing the Goodman Games version of it. They expanded the castle itself with an upper floor, and added some other elements. I like it, although my party insisted on going through all 100+ areas described in the book, in case they miss anything... They entered the unspeakable land last session, finally!
Clark Ashton Smith is one of the 'big three' of Weird Tales fame. Lovecraft, Howard, and Smith. Read Smith. So good.
Yea, I have read some of his "Zothique" stories, its some good weird (and dark) fantasy.
Clark Ashton Smith is a master storyteller!! The Zothique cycle alone warrants that title for him.
Didn't he also do some Mythos work himself?
@@kereminde Yes he did! The giant toad Great Old One is his creation.
And Lovecraft actually used Smith's name in his stories - Klarkash-ton.
Colville’s alive!
He's more than Alive! He's thriving...
I read this like Brian Blessed's "Gordon's alive!", idk if that was the intention, lol
He had been trapped inside Castle Amber, or so it seems!
More like "Colville lives" as in vecna lives
@@LuchMyes!
13:36 "I can't tell you how many times I've read box text to players who didn't understand it, asked me questions, and made me realize I didn't understand it, either."
That's why, when I run a pre-made adventure, I re-write everything in my own voice. My experience is that the people writing adventures or modules write _for the page_ instead of _for the ear._
Always a good idea to do this or at least read through the text and make some quick bullet point notes to make sure you understand it. I did that with Curse of Strahd (for the castle part, anyway) and it was very helpful.
The weirdest thing was gaming with Gygax around 2001 and realizing that this was how he was going to game til he breathed his last. The whole White Wolf-inspired narrative RPG push never happened as far as EGG was concerned.
This adventure is entirely worthwhile for the map of a manor home alone.
I would eat up more old school adventure videos. Thanks for this!
Our first module was B1: In Search Of The Unknown, which has the room with the pools. My cleric drank from one of the pools; the text said that you, the *player*, could not speak for a specific amount of time (I forget how long). I was reduced to writing notes and making hand gestures (mostly obscene); very frustrating at the time, but fun in retrospect.
I feel like that amber mist was basically "let's not worry about remembering resources/abilities spent last session". At least that's the vibe I get from it (apart from the whole "time passes between sessions like in the real world" thing.)
the early modules are so awesome. X2 really has this macabre, fairy tale, fever dream, original-meaning-of-Fae quality to it. very different to, like, most of the other modules
EDIT: "Round" in B/X (like in this module) is 10 seconds. A dungeon Turn is 10 minutes. AD&D changed the wording a little so that a Round is 1 minute broken into 6 second segments. so that's where the confusion lies
I also think that a lot of these very old modules don't give too much RP details beyond stats and "main programming" so that there would be more space for the DM to make stuff up or change things to suit the players and their actions. (gygax sorta hinted at this idea at some point where he says he doesnt want to make too many details or specific rules (barring his AD&D project and the financial reasons for it) cos the fun is in your table and your DM making stuff up)
it does mean more prep but also means less, uhh, "un-prep" to ignore certain sections of the module that assume a certain interaction went a certain way. e.g. if B2 assumes the players will say form an alliance with the monsters and storm the keep, significant amount of the official module will detail the possibilities in that and subsequent besieging mechanics... which would steer the DM into trying to make that happen so they don't waste their money on the module
this is how L1 Secret of Bone Hill can cram basically an entire campaign of sandbox into a small publication: it's like a seed from which basic parameters are set up and the DM has the 'negative space' to extrapolate, change, add, and react to player decisions
it's a very specific way of writing modules that i think the old writers never properly explained. so even old school players who were young at the time (like Matt's generation) or basically anyone that wasn't gygax had a disconnect in expectations and explanation (and thus thought it was a defect/lack as opposed to a creative choice. which led to the evolution pushed into 2nd ed modules and 3rd ed and so on that become either very railroady (Dragonlance) or the most common now that are these massive Adventure Path tomes)
EDIT 3: i LOVE that last commentary about short stories, because the market and culture around that basically does not exist anymore. it's IMO critical to recognise that to understand the genesis of modern speculative fiction, and how that informs the way that the serialised stories end up being shaped
I remember the Basic round/turn structure being different, I did not recall there being an implied 60 rounds in a turn. Great Odins Raven lol
OD&D had 1 minute round & 10 minute dungeon turn before B/X or AD&D. So it was just different lines trying to speed up round differently from Original 1974 game))
@@pranakhan i think that was the mathematical implication, which is why combats never took up more than a dungeon turn
I seem to remember it similar to you Arisu, there were different scales for round/turn in combat vs during exploration. I can’t recall just what the rates were but I feel like a full combat turn was a minute and a full exploration turn was ten minutes.
I have learned so many invaluable lessons in your videos (D&D and otherwise!) And so far my takeaway from this video is "AVerWeEEEEOUweeoiuue" 😂
I played the this module back around 1982 during a slumber party and ate the bread in the dining room. My PC failed the save and wound up (as Matt describes) having to eat twice as much food for nourishment. I was a little bummed out, but took the PC to a different game run by a teacher at school and asked if that meant he had to drink twice as much alcohol to get drunk. The DM agreed and that became a repeating tactic at taverns: goad the locals into a drinking contest, put a lot of money down in bets, and clean up.
Thank you Mr. Hayes, where ever you are!
Great stuff, thanks for the video! Btw, the ROOM OF POOLS may be from Room 31 of B1: In Search of the Unknown (also a very weird Basic adventure), which is just a room full of 14 pools with different liquids that have either weird or mundane effects.
This was my thought too. B1 is the first module I remember playing. I know one of the pools appeared to have healing properties but didn't really do much.
I remember when we played it one of the pools gave a stat improvement... but maybe that was the DM being extra "nice" because none of us would touch any of the pools. One was a pool of green slime or acid too.
Yup, that's where the pools are from, definitely.
@@fullmetalgoblingames there was a healing pool… and to keep the players from abusing it , that pool would disappear periodically.🙄🙄🙄
Yep! That was the pools. B1 was my very first adventure.
I think the Silver Light was a way to let the players feel comfortable saying they rest to end a session.
The sliver light is actually a really good idea and something we should start using because at least in my group monsters killing the PCs between sessions is actually a huge problem in the game I dm. I can't tell you how many times we start game and they were ripped apart by owlbears during the week. What I don't understand is where they come from I am the dm but I never added owlbears to this dungeon.
Castle Amber sounds like a Domain of Dread, but specifically designed to torture Matt
We played Chateaux d'Amberville. It was the first time our DM made a cassette mixtape as a musical score for the adventure. At the crypt climax, he spliced together some sound effects from an Aldo Nova song. I remember I was terrified to walk on the puzzle square, so the DM's little brother just ran across it. The dream room added new characters to our party from a pile of character sheets we inherited from a friendly D&D mentor of our DM. Good times.
Howdy Kiddo, old DM from the 70's here. One round of combat was 6 seconds, 10 rounds was 60 seconds, or 1 minute, or 1 full turn. Rounds were further divided into "segments" when needed, and yes, we ran campaigns in "Real Time". Good job, fun video, by the way. So, in conclusion, most combats were well and truly over in under a minute, kind of like how it works in the real world.
Notes from a 50 year old gamer: I am seeing a lot of content creators making way too much of this "games happen in real-time!" feature. This was not a hard and fast rule by any means, and was very loosely adhered to, even from the strictest DMs. That's mainly because it just doesn't hold up to scrutiny: In a Dungeon? Traveling by Boat? sleeping, etc. As a DM and a player, time between sessions was often handwaved and/or arbitrated quickly. USUALLY when it became important was when characters were getting rich. The amount of gold, as you mentioned, in old school dungeons could be exorbitant. And we were far more likely to roll random treasure for every single monster back then. 10th level characters with hundreds of thousands of gold could and did happen frequently. So they bought things. And built and renovated and invented things with that money. How long does it take to build a castle? We don't have time to wait a decade for your fortress to be built, so just say it was magic and here it is. Also, training was a thing as well. I think the metric was a week per level, could be wrong on that one, but y'know, a few weeks quickly turns into months as you progress. Downtime in a safe harbor was generally when you'd do that. Anyway, that's a knit to pick.
Your confusion about the "Amber Light" is missing the point. Wandering monsters are rolled during rests. It's not about the downtime, it's about the playtime spent resting. When I ran this again I quickly realised that without the amber light, my party could be worn down pretty quickly if they're constantly harassed by wandering rakastas.
Rakastas are NOT Rakshasas. Besides the obvious power disparity, Rakastas are very simple "Cat-People" (like the cast of "Cats") while Rakshasa are derived from hindu mythology and are powerful mystical beings.
Box text helps focus the players attention (if done well) and falls flat sometimes. I am seeing the difference in playstyles though. Players used to use these cues to focus their questions. Nowadays players seem to expect an investigation check solves all problems. I'm not necessarily against this, but when confronted with a simple description of the room, my players tend to simply zone out and wait for me to finish before rolling investigation.
Last but not least: It was suggested in the module to read the stories by Clark Ashton Smith. His Averoigne "cycle" is a collection of a dozen or so short stories that together could barely be called a novella. You could read them in short order. Now, these wouldn't help you much with individual characters, but you would quickly get that Averoigne is a cosmic horror playground and that can help set the mood. Castle Amber is very much in the spirit of Ravenloft as they were both inspired by the same authors.
There certainly is a place for "Fairy-tale logic", or more accurately "Fairy-tale _non_ logic", like Castle Amber.
Mind-blowing weird stuff for no apparent reason ... sounds like fun!
I had the same sort of experience with Castle Amber. My version was heavily influenced by my DM. Amber is a great example of a module that leans really hard on the stuff the DM focuses on and adds.
yeah one could imagine that the way the castle is played could change a lot based on the DM's personal idiosyncracies. Uncanny unsettling horror, or overly emotional tragedy through a man's mind palace, or strange fae whimsy etc.
For the record, I came out of the feast in Castle. Amber, with an 18 constitution on my spindly wild elf mage. It later prompted me to find myself Superior version of fine familiar so that I could hang with a dire wolf. Totally made the character.
In fact, I think that this video convinced me to run this module just for the sake of nostalgia. Definitely, I will not set this in my own D&D world. I don't think it would survive. But I have a few absurd settings for it.
Okay this is amazing. I need this to become a series, Matt going through adventures of his childhood!
Really great delivery. The draft from the stream had my attention, but the polish on this really shows.
Unlike a lot of people, I played in the early 80's in my early teens and not again until 5e, in my 50's. I remember the crazy dungeons I made as DM back then, and looking back, assumed my brain as a teen was just a disorganized mess with no sense of plot, character, or story... but maybe I just internalized the style of the modules we played, and I wasn't quite as stupid and immature as I thought... because this is exactly how my dungeons were: odd, provocative, loads of quasi-random strange events and inexplicable magic happenings operating in ways to intrigue or amuse but without reason or cohesive story. I had overlooked just how much the game had changed and matured, but thank you for this delightful reminder. Can't wait to see another UA-cam favorite (Jackson Crawford) and you together in a video.
Great video. Thanks for getting these incredible ideas out to a massive audience!
11 upvotes for a bot?? 😅
Something worth mentioning since I'm currently in a campaign that does real-time between sessions: the PCs don't "log out" at the end of the session, standing idly until next Thursday, the characters simply spend days in town. Usually resting (since healing in Basic/Expert is at a rate of only 1d3 HP per *full day of rest*), carousing for gossip, procuring gear/hirelings for their next adventure/session, or talking to NPCs. During the week, between sessions, we usually RP all that stuff in chat, so the party is rested, researched, and ready to leave town for adventuring again come start of the next session.
Anyway, love your videos! lol
This module sounds like a great place to pilfer ideas for a horror-themed festival attraction I've been building in my spare time.
I played this back in the AD&D days, but about 10 years ago our group played it using 5e rules, and it was still awesome. Superb module and setting.
'failing the mushroom save' will forever be my go to metaphor for death from now on.
Sometimes underrated how funny this dude is
Great stuff as always. One thing missing from old-school modules that even today is often overlooked, is a complete synopsis of the adventure for the gamemaster at the beginning of the module.
That’s because with old site-based adventures, there isn’t much of a summary to give. There are no events, no plots, no (or very little) NPC background, no story. Just sites that typically can be explored in an open, sandbox fashion. So the adventure designers wouldn’t have anything to include in a adventure summary, except a summary of the locations.
I'm currently DMing a BECMI game in Mystara. "Save vs. poison or die." Those were the days! Basic D&D and AD&D were dangerous and that's what made them exciting. I had many characters die during my roleplaying career and, as such, every adventure in which you were successful was so much more rewarding.
I appreciate the shout out to supergeekmike! It's a great channel, and I know a nod from you will mean a lot to him.
The Goodman games update provides motivation and backstory for the family Amber!
The boxed text is (also) a hold-over from convention play. When you would sit down at the conventions in the 70s, the adventure would have that intro text to get everyone into the adventure quickly.
And Isle of Dread (X1) has Rakasta... Ra... evil cat people
Yeah, I would imagine most people who sit down to a convention adventure have already consented to whatever setup is needed to get to the adventure. Especially since everyone's time is limited. Having basic context for why the PCs are there is fine, but no one is really fussy about the details. Only that there's a plausible enough reason why their group of ratcatchers and grave robbers is in the enchanted castle in the first place.
Oh man, getting flashbacks for the Slave Lords (A1-4) series. We never made it all the way through but the whole "this is how they play at GENCON" was mysterious and crazy to us.
I love your wolf howl pronunciation of Av-er-oi-n, Matt. It was brilliant.
I am fascinated by the old school adventure style! Please make more!
“It leads to the Empire of the Ghouls which you can make up if you want.” Thank god Kobold Press has us covered here!
Currently playing that campaign with RogueWatson and having a blast. It is as you would expect much more of a horror campaign than the usual WotC fare.
@@stanwolford9743 I just downloaded the PDF recently and have yet to crack it open but I keep hearing recommendations so it has to be really good at this point
@@trexdrew Check out Rogue Watson’s channel if you want to see us play it. He makes some great modifications to the long travel section that you may find helpful.
Castle Xyntillan, of course very much in a similar style, has been so much fun. Although there is no overarching story, it's easy to make one and in fact there is a decent chance your players will invent one that you can just roll with.
That bit describing the food was so goddamn funny
thank you for making this video, i'd love to see more of your descriptions of wacky early dnd shit
Thanks Matt. Well done! This is my favorite adventure of all time due to the availability for a dm to adapt so many different 'carnival-like' encounters. One piece of context that answers a lot of the questions you posed is that the Amber family is cursed and has gone insane due to what they did (or most of them) to Stephen Amber. In one group, I had all of the players distant relatives of the Amber family. Definitely brought more purpose. Recently purchased the Goodman games book for Castle Amber (and several others including Isle of Dread). Definitely recommended!
Goodman games is awesome!
Dungeon crawl classics is my favorite DnD book ever
The whole "amber mist" thing is due to the fact that the player characters are not allowed to leave the castle. In normal adventures of the time it was generally assumed that the PCs would leave the dungeon and go back to town to rest. But that wasn't possible here. If PC's just camped out in the middle of the dungeon in order to rest they'd get attacked by wandering monsters, spoiling their rest. With a typical 1 in 6 chance for a wandering monster every two turns (20 minutes) that means on average characters would have one encounter every two hours, or four in an eight hour "rest" period". And in Old School D&D you might get spells back after sleeping the night but you only get 1 hit point per day. All in all, this was a mechanic designed to ameliorate the "survival horror" aspect of trapping players in the environment.
Goodman Games does great stuff! Our group is continuing through their version of the Moathouse Friday night.
I ran this adventure (or part of it) in high school, back in the mid-1980s. A couple comments about things I think Matt missed: 1. IIRC (I no longer have my copy), there is a pronunciation guide for the French names in Averoigne (av-er-wonn-ye?). 2. Rakastas are NOT rakshasas. They are a feline humanoid race unique to BECMI D&D, but similar to later editions' tabaxi.
So many points for the James Acaster insert.
This is exactly how I am running D&D (I run BX/OSE) at the moment, between adventures the party has to go back to town, they choose what downtime their characters are doing in town between sessions and time is assumed to pass 1:1 out of the game. They can't end a session in a dungeon, well... they can but I make them aware that their characters might not want to stay there for a week and go through a weeks worth of encounter rolls.
I would assume the silver light is to help people running the module with the majority of the rules in effect at the time, as they will be somewhat stuck in this adventure! :)
The reason for the golden stasis field is that the PCs can’t leave the castle to return to base like a normal dungeon. basic D&D doesn’t have the real time rules that ad&d has, but it’s hard to heal without returning to base. So the authors had to come up with a way to heal between sessions. The wandering monster encounters would have been dealt with next session.
I like the mix of ideas. A trap that makes your dreams a reality? A feast of meals that will alter you, good or bad, unless you save against them? Even the idea that the entire dungeon is actually the exploration of some strange and powerful being's mind/memories, and the surreal, almost dreamlike nature of the place, there's some good stuff there. I'm not sure all of it should go together, but at the same time it's kind of inspiring.
I loved that this was also included in the official Mystara stuff for Glantri. They wrote a sequel in the early 90s with the CD voice acting. The Mark of Amber if I recall correctly.
YES! Thanks for reviewing Castle Amber. I'm running my group through it now, they just finished the west wing, and they all loved it! I have been role playing the Amber family to the hilt trying to show my players how insane this adventure is. Sadly only 2 of my players participated in the banquet, no matter how much I tried to get them all to sit down and eat, I even created a Maitre D that interacted with them in the game. 3 of my players almost had a group romance event with Richard and a Tabaxi while the other 2 sneaked into the lair of the Tabaxi to steal the key. My players had to find away to disengage from Richard's advances w out fighting him because they were all low on HP. What a blast!
I like the timing of this video as I am looking more into OSR lately.
Honestly some of these encounters seem super interesting and have so much room to be fleshed out and expanded upon, why ARE there 2 guards and a noble in a fancy hat sat by a boxer? Why DID the gold dragon disguise itself as a princess to get into the manor? Those seem like really fun ideas to explore, as long as you make your mushroom save.
How in the world did I learn about D&D being once played in real-time before the venerable Mr. Collville!?
I'll just give myself a little pat on the back I guess!
Yeah monsters killing the PCs between sessions is actually a huge problem in the game I dm sometimes we start game and they were ripped apart by owlbears during the week. What I don't understand is where they came from I am the dm but I never added owlbears to this dungeon.
The Goodman Games version is really good. Highly recommended!
I'm pretty sure that the room with many different magic pools you mention in that other module is B1 Into the Unknown.
My first DM when we started 3rd edition took us through Keep on the Borderlands followed by this. Those were great times.
Not only is the subject very interesting to me as a peek into the early days of the hobby, but your enthusiasm and delivery really made this a really fun watch. I hope there's more.
Oooh! I've been waiting for this one.
The slightly frantic, manic tone in Matt's voice while describing this adventure gives me life
20:33 The pools effects don't seem to match up, but multiple pools with various effects sound like it may have been inspired from room 31 of 'B1 - In Search of the Unknown'
Was thinking the same thing
I loved this! As someone who started playing in the 80’s, it was a blast to travel back in time and relive some of the same types of memories with Matt.
These old modules are crazy to look back on, but I seriously loved every second!
I've been running the original x2 using Labyrinth Lord. It's on hiatus now, halfway through, because I planned a too long, too linear campaign with B4 wrapped around X2. Using Traveller as a palate cleanser now. 😂
hohoho B4 with X2 is going to be a loooong ride. and yeah linearising something like B4 would definitely be a lot of work for not a lot of return in terms of player enjoyoment. traveller is always a good time
Real time between sessions is a really valuable way to play the game, 10/10 recomend. I've been playing in and running a game using this style and can say that it has adds depth and emertion to the game that I have not experienced using other styles of play.
Chateau d'Amberville! Never played it, but it was the first adventure module I ever purchased.
Me too. I had B2 and X1 from my B/X rules, bought this to continue, back then if you didn't see a module in the store it didn't exist so barely understood more B or X modules existed or they might not be a series and what a wacky way to make a campaign! Still love X2, moreso now I can create or fill all the gaps!
I've been fascinated by Castle Amber for a couple of years now, and while I dream of running it someday, it's so weird that I can't help but over-think it. This video made me realize that I can stop overthinking - it's just weird, full stop, and that's OK - and now I can relax, run it, and see what happens. Thanks Matt!
I really would like more of these stories so I can only hope it does well.
I've watched many of your videos (and I always enjoy them,) but this might be one of my favorites. I think we all owe a certain amount of gratitude to these old school modules that we all (I say, " we all" as if everybody is in their late 40's or early 50's! Ha!) grew up with and formed a lot of our conceptions of what D&D was. Whether something like Castle Amber is looked upon as whimsical, or even crazy, by today's gaming standards, it shaped what gaming was for us back in the golden era of gaming (and in particular, D&D.) I'd love your take on some of the classics that a lot of us grew up on, and I don't think I'm alone on that notion.
Gaming has changed quite a bit over the years since those early module days, but for all of their zaniness, they still are stories and supplements that we talk about to this day...with fondness, I might add. Call it nostalgia, or reliving one's youth, but at the end of the day, all of those early modules hold a special place in a lot of gamers' hearts. I think i speak for a group of us here, if not all, that more videos like this are a welcomed addition to your catalog of videos. Long live the classics! Great job!
*And cool Ghost shirt!
Doesn't sound like a module I'd run as a whole BUT I can definitely see pulling some of those encounters into another campaign :) Thanks for the ideas!
Which, of course, is half the function of the adventure module. It's _modular._ You're not just getting a complete adventure, you're getting a toolkit you can pillage for your own campaign. Whether that's a dungeon map, a list of random encounters, a neat vignette, or a framing device.
I was so excited to see your take on Castle Amber. I have never been much of a fan of "funhouse dungeons" (e.g., Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, Lan Beyond the Magic Mirror, etc.), but for whatever reason, I've always been fond of Castle Amber.
It was one of the first modules I ever ran. I played it pretty true to the text, not yet knowing that the DM could do whatever they wanted to as well as the players. If my memory serves, I flat-out told my players they couldn't go to the Kingdom of the Ghouls, because it "wasn't part of the module and they would all just die." Ah, the good ol' days when folks didn't challenge the railroad so much, they just got on the train.
I would be the player to finish this adventure, and then immediately ask how much further we were away from where we were heading for our actual quest... ya know, from the opening box text lol
It makes me happy that you also use the word Xanthian. That actually makes more sense than not. It did devolve into puns run amok eventually, but the first half dozen or so were pretty awesome. Thanks for the sweet video!
Nine Princes in Amber is amazing!
And it takes place in the world of the Amber. I used the trumps idea in my D&D campaign
I think the whole of the first set of Chronicles is an amazing fertilizer for creativity. It's quite amazing to consider what "reality" is to the Princes and what they can do.
@@kereminde I think Matt should read the books - a least the first 5 - they are quick reads. I combo theme this with Lankhmar and Melnibone themes and wrap it around 5e d&d😀
@@mayhem_64 I am unfortunately too young to have tripped across the same fantasy books as everyone else who played pre-WOTC D&D.
No Lankhmar, Elric, but I did get 'Chronicles of Amber', 'The Pyrdain Chronicles', and Thieves' World. Along with a few other series more modern in provenance.
But I was reading many things which fed into what Matt spoke of in the book. Often short stories weren't... well, look, pick up "Callahan's Crosstime Saloon" and you can see it. Asimov's first Foundation novel is another illustration. And I do recall reading some Harlan Ellison now and then, which... I do recommend to ANYone. My mom would talk about it sometimes if I could get her to that time of her life in college.
Short stories seemed to be less about characters than the situation and where it went. And that was the most common format until it was seen there was a market. THEN the novels would happen more often.
I'm running this with the original Expert rules. I've got Isabel Amber taunting the adventurers with a pass-by as she makes her way down the west wing's hall of mirrors where she enters the Indoor Forest and, on a wandering monsters check, six skeletons emerge out from the Indoor Forest. Anything is possible around every corner! I'm having the adventurers find the necessary items which will grant them entrance ultimately to Averoigne, this being the main quest. It's working out better than I originally thought. We ran Isle of Dread for about a year and moved immediately into this one.
You'd almost think D&D was created so people can have fun. You know, instead of solving existential problems and child trauma
Omg so excited to see this! I threw this into the middle of lost mines of phandelver and our first character deaths were in here. So many memories and inside jokes from this wacky castle. Then they named the party The Amber Legion after the castle.
Dang! I could be wrong, but is that a Battle of Beiden Pass box set back there? That set was my introduction to the game back in the day
It IS the Battle of Beiden Pass!
Recently, my Pathfinder 1e group ran this adventure as part of a longer ongoing campaign. The GM had to do a lot of work to convert things over, and he ended up making some changes to the narrative around the place to better fit within our campaign's story. The world-hopping section was replaced with a jaunt over to Faerûn, in which we adventured as "ancestral" versions of ourselves. It was a lot of fun, and the adventure in Castle Amber was bizarre, strange, and weird, but I think I'll have a lot of fond memories of it for a while.
I'm just appreciating the Ghost t shirt. Popestar and Impera are heavily used in my workout playlist; I'm hoping to see them live soon.
Matt, I love your channel. You should really take a deeper dive into Castle Amber. It's got a learning curve, but worth it. Goodman games did a great job. Deep dive, BECMI, Mystara, Glantri, The Amberville family, the immortal Charles Amberville
New MC video? Tonight’s dinner entertainment will be a treat for sure
The pool room is real from B1 In Search of the Unknown. My group is running through this now and just left the pool room last weekend. Great times after spending two games in the room messing with them.
Don’t have the Goodman Games for Castle Amber but their In Search of the Boardlands is great as it ties B1 and Keep on the Boardlands together.
I DID A VIDEO ON 1-1 TIME, but I had NO IDEA it was in Castle Amber!
I don't want to plug but QB and Supergeek Mike missed a few things from the guy whose notes they copied. You can use this rule on 5th edition btw!
1-1 time is not in Castle Amber because it’s not ad&d.
@@davidmc8478 I think it's pretty obvious the module writers either forgot that fact, or (as Matt explained!) they didn't care all that much for the difference, and figured both games would run it.
@@gelatinousrube nah man, it’s just a way to have a safe overnight sleep in the dungeon. The text also lets the PCs level up, which normally means returning to base. They won’t finish the module at level 4, so the writers needed a mechanic to allow healing, resting and level ups without disturbance. In other dungeons a night sleep in the dungeon world be disturbed by wandering monsters each hour (1 in 3 per 20 min). It’s leomond’s tiny hut
@@davidmc8478 nope! p clearly a reference to 1-1 time :D right there in the book
Please do more of these. It was so much fun, and I laughed out loud several times.
Love it :D, but hasn't Matt said a lot of these things and reviewed this before in running the game? I might be mistaken though :P.
Seems unlikely since I only just read the module for the first time in my life like two weeks ago.
Maybe you're a time traveler!
Nope, though he did talk about this on stream. That might be what you're thinking of
Are you thinking of White Plume Mountain maybe?
@@mcolville Hehe I wish :). I probably just confused it with something else you had done, White Plume Mountain etc. Anyway very interesting and wacky adventure XD. And great video as always. Btw, Ive gotten about 20+ people to listen to the LOTR 1981 BBC Radio play since I discovered it through you last year. Thanks again, Ive prolly listened to that highlight series on your twitch 4-5 times by now :). Also got the courage to DM through you 2 years ago, still going strong :D.
Castle amber is written with the assumption you're using one to one time. There was no "stopping to rest" there was just ending the session and healing one hit point for every day you don't play. So if you played on a fixed time day, you're only going to have healed 7 hit points between sessions.
Love the timing of this vid. I'm at the end of a months-long break from ttrpg's. It began with the D&D conflicts, but that wasn't the cause. Me & my group of 20+ years are fighting real monsters, like Grief and Fear. I couldn't even think about gaming until yesterday, and hearing Coleville's delivery feels like a rallying cry to one of my life-long favorite hobbies. Blessings to you & to everyone who pursues their joys with passion.
34:15 thanks, Matt. That was my favorite of all your videos!
Castle Amber was my first adventure in the early 90's and I have similar "was it my memory or was it actually awesome" feelings. We got to the gold dragon lady after 3 or 4 sessions, then our DM (my friend's dad's friend) bounced. Thank you for this bit of nostalgia!
I have been following Jackson Crawford for a few years now. Almost as long as I have followed you, and that has been from your first episode. I have a great amount of respect for the way he brings the Norse history forward. I am very much looking forward to that interview.
That picture of the giant smashing the tower sells the hell out of that book. As soon as I saw it I wanted to play it so bad.